Devil's Dance
by slytherinish
Summary: Harry had always thought that they didn't have any secrets.  Draco didn't think that Harry would find out he was wrong. COMPLETED.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Not mine.

AN: Please note that this fic contains mature themes that some might find triggering or controversial. I really don't think it'll be all that graphic, but I'll make sure to include relevant warnings before every chapter. I think it's important for writers to acknowledge difficult subjects like this one, and when I had this idea, I couldn't pass it up.

Devil's Dance

Harry had always thought that if someone wrote the story of his life, he'd tell everyone he knew not to read it. Or at least, he'd tell the people that he _liked _not to read it.

When he and Draco got together, he grew even more convinced that his story was not one that any sane person would consider reading, much less writing. It seemed even standing in someone else's proximity was damaging to their mental health, as though madness radiated off of him like an airborne illness. When he had these melodramatic and admittedly theatrical thoughts, Harry generally laughed at himself. Then something would happen. Something like Draco ending up in prison for a crime he knew nothing about, and he'd start taking himself seriously again.

The circumstances surrounding his prison sentence were kept under wraps to everyone except those who had worked on the case directly, and Harry had not been one of those people. All he knew was that Draco had pled down from a felony to a misdemeanor, but he wasn't sure what either of those charges had been.

Well. He wasn't positive, because clearly, significant others were insignificant enough to be kept out of the loop. He had a fairly good idea, however, based on three things. One, Draco's mother had been murdered on May 15th. Two, Draco had been arrested (in the home they shared, no less) on May 16th. Three, people who had as much history together as they did usually had a fairly good idea of when one of them was lying to the other, and on May 15th, Draco had lied to Harry.

On May 15th, he had seemed distracted, which Draco never was. Draco was always painfully alert about everything from Harry's whereabouts to Harry's outfits, but Harry had shown up to the kitchen table that morning wearing mismatching socks, and Draco hadn't noticed. That in itself was not proof of anything other than perhaps a bad night, but Harry knew personally that Draco most certainly had not had a bad night at all. He had had a very good night, and by extension, so had Harry. They'd fallen asleep together tangled up in each other's limbs as they usually did, and when they woke up, their bare skin had stuck together awkwardly, in a way in which Harry was certain he'd come away with a thin layer of Draco's skin when they'd pulled apart.

The lie hadn't come until late that afternoon. He'd been getting ready to go out and Harry had asked him where he was going. His answer: "I have to run down to the store to get some milk." Ordinarily, this wouldn't make Harry think twice, but the fact that he'd not noticed his socks that morning made him wonder (because indeed, he had worn them on purpose just so Draco _would_ notice). He knew before he opened the refrigerator door that there was a full carton of milk sitting on the shelf inside, still unopened and well before its expiration date. Once he thought about it a little more, he remembered that Draco was lactose intolerant (which should have been his _first_ clue).

And while, yes, Draco did love him, he didn't think their love was really the practical kind in which he would worry over whether or not Harry had milk to put in his coffee in the morning. It was a nice thought, honestly, but entirely unrealistic.

Draco hadn't come home until the next morning, and Harry hadn't had a chance to ask him where he'd really gone because Harry's co-workers were standing at his front door five minutes later, putting his boyfriend in handcuffs. May 15th had been a fairly bad day, but all things considered, he thought May 16th was probably the worst.

He hadn't seen Draco in a year; the length of his prison sentence.

It had been a very long year, as far as years went. He had gone over the details (the few that he knew) over and over with Ron and Hermione until he was certain he had driven them to distraction. Not even Hermione's patience had withstood his almost incessant musings and she'd finally had to tell him that he wasn't allowed to talk about it with them anymore, not a _word_, until Draco had been released from prison. As it happened, that was today, and Harry was waiting for Draco on the dock upon which he would be released from Azkaban in – he checked his watch – fifteen minutes.

While he waited, he was simply standing on the rickety wooden dock doing not much of anything in the same place a thousand others had stood waiting for their loved ones to be returned to them. Once returned, their loved ones were probably a little… _less_ than what they had been when they'd been taken. The thought made Harry pale a little, but he stared at the water resolutely and waited as thousands of others before him had managed to do without keening over or sicking up or the ten other negative reactions he wanted to have at that moment.

Finally, a boat floated out of the mist (for dramatic effect, he supposed) with one of the prison guards at the stern with his back turned to Harry, rowing toward the dock. Facing him was his boyfriend, or, the man who _had_ been his boyfriend a year before. He was thinner now, and looked a little sickly, but he was more or less the same, except for the small fact that he was now a murderer. Probably.

Harry walked to the edge of the dock and held out his hand so Draco could pull himself up on the dock. No one else was waiting for him, simply because there _was_ no one else who would have any reason to. His father had killed himself a few years before, which Harry thought might have been a good decision in case Draco had decided to off him too. The two men stared at each other for a while (it seemed like hours but was probably only a few seconds) but Harry was content to take in his grey eyes and his silver hair for the first time in 365 days. He'd tried to recreate them from his memories for 365 days, but he'd succeeded a grand total of 2 days, and they had been the ones immediately following Draco's arrest.

363 days was a long time to go without. There were a hundred things Harry could think of to tell him. In fact, he had told him all of them at least once when he'd thought about how this conversation ought to go. He could say _'I still love you' _or _'You're still beautiful'_. Both of those things were true, but so was:

"A year's a long time to be gone on a milk run."


	2. Chapter 2

Draco didn't speak once they were at home, forcing Harry to wonder if Azkaban had rendered him incapable of saying anything at all. It wouldn't be the first time a prisoner had been left with such side effects after being freed from their cage. Even though the Dementors had long since been banished from the island, they said that their presence still lingered in the walls.

Harry watched the blonde carefully, right up until Draco caught him at it and rolled his eyes, indicating that he should stop. He looked sickly pale, as though he was recovering from the flu, and he was thin enough that Harry had to wonder how he hadn't just slipped through the prison bars like a ghost. The harsh overhead lighting only cast harsh shadows over his emaciated features, making them all the more shocking and pronounced.

"Say something," Draco said finally, and it was then that Harry realized he hadn't spoken a word since he'd met him on the dock. He wondered if Draco hadn't talked because Harry hadn't, or if it was the other way around.

Harry bit his bottom lip, his emotions brimming up in his chest and threatening to overflow. That would be messy, and he'd hate for Draco to have to clean him up on his first night back at home. It did seem a bit backwards.

"I've really missed you." It seemed strange to be standing in the middle of the bedroom, and not touching one another at all. Their bedroom had always involved a lot of touching, actually, and a lot of whispered words in the dark. Lovemaking wasn't just the act itself, but it was the before and after as well, and Draco had always been very generous throughout it all. It was one of the many things that had surprised Harry about Draco.

For one thing, he was surprised to find that he was capable of murdering his mother. That was the thing about relationships… you never really learned what was most important about a person until it was either too late. Harry wondered if it was worse to find those things out when it was too late, or not at all. "What did you do?" he whispered.

"Don't ask questions you already know the answer to, Harry. Some people ought to keep their mouth closed lest they open it and erase any credibility they had to begin with." His voice was dismissive and lazy and hopelessly posh, even after a year in Azkaban. He still sounded as if he was getting ready to address the Queen, even if he was only asking for someone to pass the butter, and Harry loved him for it. It was the eyes anyway, that said what Harry really wanted to hear. They were apprehensive, as though worried that Harry wouldn't want to touch him now that he had someone else's blood on his hands.

"Why did you do it?"

"I had to," Draco said firmly. "I don't regret it. She deserved it. She was a sick old woman, and I wanted to do it. Someone like her oughtn't have to walk the earth like a monster that society won't let die." Harry remembered her trial, and how she had been exiled rather than sent to prison. She'd gone to France and lived in a family home they had owned for decades but never used in the kind of comfort and extravagance to which she was accustomed. "I suppose you hate me for it." He sounded unconcerned, though Harry knew him better than that. He wasn't convincing anyone… not even himself.

"Yeah, I do." Draco flinched. "But I still love you. So what am I to do with you?" He moved in closer until there was no more than a book's width between them and he could see Draco's pulse quicken at the base of his throat. "I spent half of the past year wanting to put you in shackles myself and the other half tormenting myself, trying to remember the way you smell and the way you feel."

His hand reached out until it was wrapped around his throat, his thumb pressed against his pulse which jumped under his touch. Harry leaned in slowly, until their lips were mere centimeters apart, wanting to taste him again for the first time in so long. Instead, he pulled back and Draco, to his delight, leaned in after him, as though trying to steal a kiss.

Draco pulled back and looked down, though his voice is steely and businesslike. "I understand. I'll find somewhere else to sleep tonight." Harry studied the man in front of him, finding it absurd that they were here, now, in this situation, when he'd certainly never imagined it. He'd never imagined spending a year apart, no matter how bad things got, and he'd never imagined Draco keeping secrets from him, but clearly, he'd been a fool on both counts.

"No you fucking won't." Grey eyes flickered back up to Harry's right before he shoved him onto the bed, pulling and tugging until he laid on top of him. His mouth claimed Draco's hungrily, like a man starved, and his fingers played along his sides and hips, relishing the feeling of his slender form under his touch.

It was hard and fast, but somehow, they both knew that they weren't just fucking. As Draco's back arched up when Harry twisted his hips in the way he knew he liked, his eyes locked on Harry's with the sort of devotion one simply couldn't mistake for anything else other than love. They both also knew it was going to be over far too soon, and despite both of their best efforts to draw it out for as long as they could, their bodies seemed determined to defeat them.

He drank in the sight of Draco writhing and pulling at the sheets, his teeth biting down hard into the tender flesh of his bottom lip. "Look at me, baby," Harry commanded, and his eyes snapped open as his body began to convulse and shake as though he was a man possessed. As they both lost themselves in the heady, all-consuming orgasm that they'd both been waiting on for _months_, Harry made one last request. "Tell me who you belong to."

And as Draco soaked in those last few moments of bliss, he whispered against Harry's shoulder: "You. Only you."

But when Harry woke up the next morning, he was gone again. The only difference was that this time, he didn't even bother lying about why.

He didn't bother saying anything at all.


	3. Chapter 3

"For a prude, he certainly had no qualms about putting my cock in his mouth."

Harry froze with his back turned to Boot and Pratchett as they carry on talking about a bloke Boot picked up the night before. Up until then, Harry had passed it off as mindless break room conversation which he intended to ignore as usual. But…

"That pretty piece of arse was begging for it by the end," Boot said crassly. "You know me. I've always had a thing for leggy blondes." Pratchett laughed and slapped him on the back, as though congratulating him for demeaning another human being via a mutually agreed upon one night stand that was, by definition, just as beneficial for one man as it was for the other. Any rational gay man knew that, but Harry was only one of the two at present.

It only took a second to slam Boot up against the cupboard door.

"His name?" Boot's eyes widened as they flickered from Harry's face to Pratchetts, who stood by idly.

Prachett only had this wisdom to impart: "Shit, man…"

It had been two weeks since Draco had left Harry without so much as a word of farewell or gratitude to cling to. He wondered often if it might have been better to have forgotten about him in the year he'd been in Azkaban so he wouldn't have to try to do it now. He'd never say it out loud, because it sounded bad enough in his own head, but the pain was a physical one that made his heart ache in his chest. He'd never given it much thought before, but it's ever present throbbing reminded him every second that it didn't really belong to him anymore, and he didn't think he could get it back. "His name, Boot," he repeated calmly.

Boot swallowed; Harry could see his Adam's apple bobbing up and down in his throat. "I'm sorry, Harry mate. I didn't know you were listening…" Harry ran a hand down his face and sighed heavily, already aware that he was about to be delivered a blow, and what was worse was that he had _asked_ for it. "Malfoy made it seem like you weren't together anymore."

Harry closed his eyes for a second, letting the pain sink in. Then, he pulled his fist back and punched Boot in the mouth. His teeth cut his knuckles and when he staggered backward, they were covered with blood, though to his satisfaction, he realized that not all of it was his own.

He walked away from the pair before they could realize he was gone, though he looked back in time to see Boot mopping up his bloody lip with the back of his hand. He wasn't surprised to find that he wasn't sorry in the slightest. Still pissed, he strode into his office and threw the door shut behind him. The entire Auror department knew better to disturb him when it was closed, because while his scar had faded since Voldemort's death, his rage hadn't.

Parts of him were missing, like his ability to speak Parseltongue but others were very much intact. He still had a temper he fought to keep under control, and sometimes, it won. In other cases, like this one, he didn't bother trying.

He sat at his desk with the heels of his hands pressed into his eyes. His office was a dull, boring affair with no wall decorations other than his awards and certifications, which had only been placed there under Hermione's persistent urgings. When Draco had once visited it, he'd declared it to be akin to the inside of a cupboard. Harry had watched his face turn from haughty and self-satisfied to panic-stricken.

"_I didn't mean… Fuck, I'm an arsehole…"_ he had lamented, grey eyes dimmed with his own mistake.

Harry had stood up from his desk and wrapped his arms around the slender blonde man, comforting him when it ought to have been the other way around. He'd assured him tenderly that thoughts of the cupboard he'd grown up in didn't haunt him anymore. He hadn't told him that other, more malicious ghosts had taken its place.

Instead, he'd scooped him up and made love to him over his desk, not caring in the slightest who could hear Draco call his name as he came under Harry's fond ministrations.

Harry clenched his eyes shut even tighter at the memory, then stood, heading for the fireplace. He had a few visits to make today. He was going to find Draco Malfoy, because he had loved that man when no one else had, and at the very least, he wanted an explanation in exchange for his troubles.

xxx

"I don't know, Potter. If you want to find him, you're better off searching street corners than here." Parkinson's smug face looked over her tea cup at him as they sat in her lounge, decorated with the kind of furniture that, if sold, could have bought three homeless families a flat to stay in and still have some left over. Harry was sitting in a high backed wooden chair without armrests, which he found more uncomfortable with every passing second.

"Draco's not a whore," Harry said automatically in defense of a man he was starting to think he didn't really know at all.

"No, not yet," she simpered. "But it's only a matter of time before he starts asking for money in exchange for his services. He'd be a fool if he didn't." She tilted her chin down and eyed him with a knowing look in her eyes. "That man can do _sinful_ things with his tongue. I'm certain that is one thing we can agree upon, Potter, and it may well be the _only_ thing."

Harry sighed and ran a hand down the back of his neck in exasperation. "For fuck's sake, he's only been gone for two weeks. How many men could he have possibly had in that time?" Pansy merely shrugged, making it clear that if she knew, she certainly wasn't going to tell him. He supposed her discretion was something to be admired… everyone had to have at least _one_ redeeming quality, he supposed.

"Come on, Potter. This is, and always _has_ been, Draco's method of coping. He likes being reckless, as if _daring_ Death to take him early. I think it makes him feel alive," she said conversationally as she stirred more sugar into her tea with a silver spoon. "In any case, I'm surprised he didn't take it this far before now. It says something about his devotion to you, though what, I can't quite put my finger on. You'll have to forgive me… deciphering other's emotions has never been a forte of mine, nor will it ever be."

Harry studied her quietly for a moment, finding something amiss about her explanation. "Why not before now? He had no reason… he was _happy_."

Pansy shook her head slowly as a trill of laughter fell from her lips. "He was raised by actors, darling. He learned from the best." She paused, as if wondering if she ought to continue. "What with his mother being ill for so long, it was only a matter of time before he ran off the rails. We all knew it…"

Harry shook his head. "Ill?"

Pansy clicked her tongue against her teeth. "Yes, and I said to him, 'Draco, darling, she'll die soon enough in her own time. Let nature take its course.' But he wouldn't listen."

He stared at her, and she stared back until a look of understanding crossed her pale face. She seemed genuinely amused, as though he had just said something very funny. "My god, Potter, he didn't tell you?"

He waited patiently for the bomb to drop. "Narcissa Malfoy had some kind of genetic Muggle disorder… what did he call it?" She slid her teacup onto its saucer with a dull clink. "Ah yes. Huntington's Disease."


	4. Chapter 4

AN: There will be one more chapter after this one. Thank you so much for reading! :)

xxx

"That's not possible," Harry said. "They're the oldest Pureblood family in England."

Pansy smirked, then put her teacup on the table in front of her, clearly self-satisfied and smug, though Harry could not imagine why. He could not hope to understand a Slytherin's mind. He had given up years ago, even with Draco, who still bore the same traits now as he had in school. He had merely adjusted them to suit him better, and Harry adored him for all of them because he wouldn't be himself if he took away even one. "They _say_ they are, Potter. And we both know there is a _vast_ difference between what is _said_ and what is _true_."

He lowered his head slightly in acknowledgement, remembering the lies that the paper had printed about him and still did to this day. He was still their meal ticket, it would seem, though what they printed now made him seem entirely _too_ good.

"Clearly, there are some impurities in Narcissa's line. The Blacks had oft been known to have loose morals and wandering eyes, particularly their woman. To put it more simply, there are… impurities in their blood." Harry noted the undercurrents of her words, and the age-old disdain she had always had for Muggles and their ilk.

"Pansy…" He leaned forward, his hands clasped in front of him as though in prayer. "I have to find him. I have to see him. _Where is he_?"

She sighed theatrically but to Harry's shock, handed him a card with an address printed on it. "He can be found there. But Potter…" She paused and bit her bottom lip, seeming both sincere and concerned. "Do for him what he wouldn't do for his mother. Let him determine his own course from here. He has had a hard life filled with regret, and if he wants to destroy himself, he has the right to."

xxx

Harry stood in front of the flat Draco was staying in, feeling as though he were willingly walking into the snake pit. He didn't know what laid behind the door, though as all abandoned people often did, he expected the worst. Perhaps there was a man in there with him, who looked a little like Harry. Then again, he wasn't sure if it would be worse for him to look like him or look like the opposite of him. If he looked like him, then at least there was the chance that Draco had been searching for him in some other man. If he didn't, then perhaps he favored the kind of man now that Harry could never be.

He stared at the wood grain of the door, and the bronze number plate near the top of it, checking for the hundredth time to make sure it was the right one. Gradually, his thoughts shifted as they often did at times like these to happier times, though admittedly, they hadn't been much easier. _Nothing_ about Draco Malfoy would ever be _easy_.

He remembered the first time he'd ever seen him smile… they'd been on a mission as partners in the field, having been thrown together on the first day of Auror training. Agnes… their old department head… had asked (which was basically the same thing as a command, but with a slightly different inflection) the two of them to retrieve an artifact that had been stolen from a Ministry official. They had obliged, naturally, because both of them had wanted to keep their heads. They had both gone through too much only to have their brains melted by their superior's heated stare.

When they had arrived, the place had been surrounded with the sort of wards that one could probably cook a turkey over. The only way in had been if the owners had accidentally left a door or a window ajar, and to both of their surprise (and chagrin) they had. It had been raining that day, and Harry remembered both of their boots squelching in the mud.

When it came down to entering the building, Draco, being of more slender build, had been selected to slither through the narrow gap afforded to them by the half-open window. And as he'd been making ready to climb in, Harry had instructed him to take off his boots. "You'll track mud in," he had said.

"You're worried about their décor at a time like this, Potter?"

"They'll find your footprints."

After much sighing and cursing, the blonde had slipped out of his boots and left them in the mud so he could slide through the window in his stocking feet a moment later. A moment after _that_, a light on the second floor had turned on, and Harry had hissed at his partner to hurry up. He'd escaped just in time with the object intact and, certain that he was about to be caught, they had both taken off at a run until they were a safe distance away. Breathing hard, Draco had stared down at his feet with his face even paler than usual. "Christ, I forgot my goddamn shoes!"

Harry had, at the time, wanted to laugh very much. It was only later, when Draco wasn't around, that he'd allowed himself to. "Go get them, Potter." Harry had obliged for reasons he couldn't recall (perhaps Draco had offered to buy him a drink or a pack of cigarettes) and he'd trotted back a few moments later with his boots in hand. He had tossed them on the ground in front of the blonde with his nose wrinkled. "I definitely deserve a drink after that. Christ, your shoes smell horrible, Malfoy." He'd laughed.

"No worse than you do, Potter," he had said, but he'd been smiling.

It was funny the things that stuck with you. They're never the things you might expect.

Faced with reality again, Harry raised his hand and knocked on the wooden door that separated him from new memories that he wasn't sure he really wanted to make.

When Draco opened the door, he was alone. Harry felt a small weight lift off of his chest. His face paled once he saw Harry, and he wondered if he'd been expecting someone else.

Draco only had this to say: "Pansy. That bitch."

Harry looked at him for a moment, unsure of what to say. He certainly couldn't disagree with him. "Can I come in?"

Draco shrugged and stood aside, leaning against the door and waved him inside with a flourish of his hand. Harry took the few steps to cross the threshold and took in the small flat. It was sparsely furnished, which made him feel a little bit better. It meant Draco hadn't been here before… hadn't intended to move in so suddenly. There was a bare bulb swinging above the kitchen table and a single sofa laid diagonally across the floor in the living room. It was small… Harry felt like he could see all of it from where he was standing except for the bedroom.

He doubted he'd get a chance to see that.

Draco made no excuses. In fact, he didn't say anything at all.

Harry ran his tongue over his top teeth and lowered his head. "I know you probably don't want to see me." Draco did not refute this, so Harry tried again. "I need to know why you left. You said you were _mine_." The words came out forced, as though each of them cost him something. He looked at Draco fiercely, willing him to realize that he'd made a mistake.

Draco ran a hand over his face tiredly. "What did Pansy tell you?"

"Everything." It was a broad statement, but it had the desired effect. Draco looked at him sharply, but Harry pushed on as the realization finally hit him.

"You didn't murder your mother. You _euthanized_ her."

Draco bit his bottom lip. He was trembling. "Yes." He took a long shaky breath before he began to explain what had really happened. He told Harry how she had lost all motor control, and how she had begun to lose her mind. She couldn't remember the most recent details once she had succumbed to madness. She had loved to paint, Draco said, and right until the end, she had tried to continue… even when her paintings began to look like the work of a child.

Ten years ago, he said in a shaky voice, when the disease had first set in, she had made him promise that he would kill her when the time came. And he had promised because… "I loved her." He looked at Harry then with a clear, impassive gaze that _scared_ him. It broke after a moment, his shoulders sagging. With his head bowed, his voice shook as he gave Harry one last truth.

"Harry… _I _have it."

Harry blinked. The words could mean anything. _I have the last crescent roll_ or _I have the milk I was supposed to bring back a year ago. _But Harry knew that it was not that easy.

_Nothing_ _about Draco Malfoy would ever be_ _easy_.

"I got the results back from the test I had done before I was sent to Azkaban when I came home. They were owled to me the morning I left… they must have been waiting to send them until I got released from Azkaban." His face grew paler still. "Harry… I tested positive for Huntington's."


	5. Chapter 5

Harry grew suddenly cold. "That's why you left…"

"Yes," Draco said. "That's why I left. It never had to do with you, Harry. I _am _yours… but I can't ask you to keep me. I don't want you to have to live with me once the disease takes me because… when that happens, I won't belong to anything but it."

Harry looked hurt for a moment before he closed the distance between them, resting a hand gently on Draco's hip. "Remember when we finally got together?" He allowed himself a small smile at the memory.

He had found Draco at a club quite accidentally when they'd both been off of work. Harry had been there for Ron's bachelor party, and Draco had been there because he enjoyed the seduction of the club. He enjoyed even more picking up men there and taking them home with him at the end of the night. But after Harry had taken a few shots of firewhiskey (and after two years of lusting after him), he'd walked up to Draco in the middle of the floor and pulled him flush against his chest.

"_Come home with me_," he had whispered in his ear, "_and you'll never have any reason to come back here again_." Draco had laughed, but he had agreed for reasons that Harry might never understand.

Needless to say, he never _did_ go back to that club again.

"Yes," Draco breathed, once they had both returned to the present. They played this game often, asking each other if they remembered various instances in their past, when it went without saying that they _did_. It was just an excuse to revisit fond memories, though neither of them would ever admit it. "You were wearing that horrible vest and socks that didn't match."

Harry allowed himself another grin. "Exactly. You need me, and I need you. Look, the entire year you were gone, I swear, my socks didn't match _once_."

Draco finally grinned back, though it seemed to require a great deal of energy. "Please," Harry said pleadingly. "I want you with me. I'll take you in any state at all, and I will be _damned_ if I let any disease take you away."

The blond looked away for a long moment. Finally, he pressed his lips chastely against Harry's and sighed. "But it will. And when it does, there will be _no one_ to do for me what I did for my mother."

Harry closed his eyes for a moment with his forehead resting against Draco's, unsure of what to say. It was weeks later when he finally figured it out but until then, it didn't matter. He simply wanted Draco with him.

That night, they made love in Draco's flat and the next day, Draco went home with Harry. He never asked Draco about the men he'd been with after he'd left, simply because he didn't want to know. There was, however, one name that would not leave them alone, and haunted them every day. But it was a name that belonged to no man, woman, or ghost.

It belonged to a disease.

xxx

Two weeks later, Harry came home to an empty flat. As usual, he felt panic rise up in his chest. Every time Draco wasn't within sight, he was certain he'd gone for good.

The problem was, of course, that Harry now knew he had a damn good reason for leaving. The selflessness of Draco leaving after he'd gotten the results of his test had not gone unrecognized, but just as Draco was convinced that Harry would be better off if he wasn't around, Harry was convinced that being without him would be just as debilitating as any degenerative illness.

They'd never understand each other on that point. Harry felt certain.

His eyes landed on a bottle of milk on the kitchen counter. His gaze nearly swept past it completely in search of something less mundane that might give him a clue about Draco's whereabouts. But his attention caught on a bit of parchment lying conspicuously next to it with a note scrawled across it in Draco's graceful hand.

_Here's the milk you've been pining after for a year, Potter. I'll be home in an hour._

Harry's chest swelled in that ridiculous fashion in which he felt as though he might bubble over into a puddle of sweet syrupy sap. He coughed roughly, and with some effort, shoved aside the strange desire to burst into song and dance. Thankfully, for his own sanity's sake, he managed to ignore it and instead, placed the milk in the refrigerator to chill.

He wondered if he'd ever made Draco feel that way. For some reason, he suspected that he had, except Draco was probably a lot better at pretending otherwise.

Being a Malfoy had its advantages, he supposed.

xxx

"When do you stop missing someone?"

They were sitting at the top of a hill in Wiltshire, near Malfoy Manor where Draco had chosen to bury his mother. Harry paused for a moment after the question, trying to think how best to phrase it before he realized there _was_ no good way to say it. How did you tell someone that the pain hit you when you least expected it, and that stupid, pointless things would remind you of whatever you'd lost. "You don't," he said finally.

He wrapped his arms around the blonde who was sitting with his back nestled against his chest and pressed a chaste kiss against his neck. "But you keep going because you have to. You eat, sleep, and breathe because you have to. And because other people need you to."

Draco didn't say anything for a long time. There were some people you could sit in silence with comfortably and some you couldn't, and somewhere along the line, Draco had become one of the former.

"I'm too selfish to leave you," he advised finally.

Harry didn't mind. They sat in silence for a little longer, content to merely be in one another's company. It was a strange setup they had. They were two human beings who could make each other crazy, both by being together, and by being apart. They've been doomed from the start.

He thought they were both aware of the fact, but that neither of them minded very much.

The-Boy-Who-Lived willed himself to keep his next words to himself. But The Chosen One urged him forward, insistent that he make the right decision, no matter the sacrifice. Truly, the right decision was rarely, if ever, easy. This one would cost him more than anything he's given up thus far, but Draco was always the one person he couldn't save when they'd been young men.

But he could now.

"If you want me to," he began slowly, "when the time comes…" He paused and pressed his face into Draco's blonde hair. "I'll do it."

He heard the other man's low sigh as though a burden had been lifted off of his shoulders. It was all the vindication Harry needed.

"Thank you." He leaned back against him as though relaxed for the first time.

Harry had always thought that if someone wrote the story of his life, he'd tell everyone he knew not to read it. He wasn't so sure anymore.

He'd lost and cried and fought and sacrificed. But he'd loved and comforted and smiled and laughed. And he'd forgiven a man who, even after everything, deserved to be saved. In return, he himself had been saved. He was _happy_.

There were worse stories one could tell than that.


End file.
